'We believe in new' is about life and the things we think at The Open Consultancy.

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Monday, 11 February 2008

Looking for anything in particular?



Zane Lowe's good isn't he?! The slick kiwi Radio 1 DJ was waxing lyrical about how we live in the midst of the 'genreless genre' the other night.

We like this. Music, fashion and culture have been in a 'mash up' for quite sometime and it's been spilling into some interesting thinking for us here at Open.

As businesses and brands have become increasingly focused on the power of new ideas and innovation, at the same time consumers have been handed the reins to guide their own creative expression, the same perrennial question is where next?

Maybe in a few years, we'll be able to dispense with money completely and barter trade one concept for another. Or a big exchange of art - trade you a self edit short movie for a music arrangement?!

There have been many steps made toward brand and consumer integration with ideas and creative like absolutlomo.com for Absolut's photographic campaign and Red Bull's flugelbinder.co.uk where consumers can create their own ideas locker and decide what to share with others.

More specifically rather than using research to allow brands to respond to consumer demand many brands have used techniques like Nike ID to allow their customers to choose their own application of their product choice.

But with all this there's another thing to consider... Tribes/ Herding/ Trends - call it what you want, but sociologically we're programmed to follow each other in groups and the stronger the shared belief of the group, the more defined the groups behaviour.

Maybe then the 'genreless genre' is more syptomatic of a lack of unified belief. Add to this thought the findings of a recent survey showing teenagers positively enforce their pursuasions toward being active community citizens and you have a recipe that we could be on the cusp of a reformist era in the next 10 years.

So line up and be counted, our global citizens are already amongst us and they want order!

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